


0.2 Seconds

by killaidanturner



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: M/M, this is because of LA shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6318883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they kiss it’s like the aftermath of an atomic bomb, the way it moves the trees and wipes out everything in it’s path. It’s nuclear and impactful and Dean doesn’t want to stop until his bones are ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	0.2 Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> legit hoping that this works as an offering to the stars so we can get a selfie of them, also I'm a little rusty so please forgive me. this is just suppose to be a ficlet and it's spanning from 2011-2016 but I don't state the times except for the very beginning, just to clear that up.

**April 27th, 2011**

 

He can narrow it down to this, statics and science. It can take the brain 0.2 seconds to start creating feelings of love.

 

_Is that what that was?_

 

The brain plays tricks, it creates feelings of nostalgia, memories weaved together and a swelling in the chest. Dean shakes his head as he runs a hand through his hair. He’s sitting at home on the edge of his bed. He got called in for an audition, his second time auditioning for the movie, but this time a much different character.

 

He didn’t get the specifics on it, way the person before him left, he just knew he was being asked to test for chemistry.

 

It wasn’t the chemistry he was used to. He couldn’t think of a formula or equation, or even a fucking hypothesis about why he felt the way he did today. He remembers turning to look at Aidan, Aidan who was already looking at Dean and smiling. He remembers how he scrunched up his nose and thought to himself, I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. And that simply isn’t possible.

 

He taps his foot against the floor as he tries to explain the whirlpool in his veins, the erratic beating of his heart. What’s the probability of love at first sight?

 

* * *

 

When he sees Aidan next it's with thin lips and reservations. His demeanor doesn’t last long, he cracks, he falls, he comes apart quickly like a thread coming undone. It’s not a slow thing but instead instant. He smiles back at Aidan as Aidan moves his hands wildly telling him a story about a fight he got in at a pub a few years back.

 

0.2 seconds.

 

* * *

 

Dean memorizes the color of the half dim yellow lights of Aidan’s trailer.

 

He sits on the small couch next to Aidan, their knees touching and their shoulders pressed together. Some part of them always seems to be in contact, as if they’re always on a collision course with each other, bound to be pressed together.

 

* * *

 

When they kiss it’s like the aftermath of an atomic bomb, the way it moves the trees and wipes out everything in it’s path. It’s nuclear and impactful and Dean doesn’t want to stop until his bones are ashes.

 

* * *

 

Waiting in airports becomes a science. The speed of a luggage carousel memorized, and how fluorescent lights rest against the crown of Aidan’s dark hair, blending like a halo in a watercolor painting.

 

* * *

 

“I read something once, a study done by a professor.”

 

“Yeah, what was it about?”

 

This is how they are, they discuss things, what they read, what they watch. Dean has never been afraid to tell Aidan anything.

 

“About if the human brain can fall in love at first sight.”

 

Aidan turns, smiling at Dean and pointing a finger. “You’re such a romantic! Do you believe that?”

 

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

 

“Is this some big confession?” Aidan leans in with a grin and Dean rolls his eyes.

 

“Didn’t you feel something that day?”

 

“What day?”

 

“The day we met.”

 

“Of course I did.” Aidan shrugs his shoulders as he walks away and into the small space of his kitchen to grab a spoon and a container of peanut butter.

 

“Well, the human brain can start experiencing feelings of love in as little as 0.2 seconds.”

 

Aidan takes a spoonful into his mouth and works the peanut butter around his tongue before he speaks again. “How long did it take you to feel that with me?”

 

It wasn’t under a second but it was a matter of minutes and Dean tells him about their audition, about Aidan’s shoulder against his and how he felt like he had always known him.

 

* * *

 

Aidan likes midnight more than he likes the dawn, more than he likes sunrise. He likes the dark of night, blues and purples bleeding together. He likes not being able to tell what time it is.

 

“It’s more comfortable,” Aidan tells him one night after he wakes Dean up by wrapping arms around his thin waist.

 

Dean who has always liked the sun, spent his life basking in golden rays, all of a sudden thinks that maybe he likes the night just as much.

 

* * *

 

He closes his eyes and paints a canvas behind his eyelids. The bow of Aidan’s lips, the crooked angle of his teeth.

 

* * *

 

“You act like we’re a weight, like I am this unbearable thing to you.”

 

He didn’t think that falling in love was like holding the heavens, crushing but not willing to give up.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Wednesday night and they’re completely silent. Aidan finally breaks it, in the dark among the sheets, wrapped around his long limbs like waves.

 

“If I believed in it, would you have loved me more?”

 

“Believed in what?” Dean asks without turning his head. Even in the dark he can’t stand the idea of looking into his eyes.

 

“Love at first sight.”

 

Dean wonders how many seconds it took for them to come undone.

 

* * *

 

The space between them has turned into Elysian fields, graveyards that stretch for thousands of miles. Berlin is a ghost town, an imprint of a former life. Zurich whispers haunted things in his dreams, phantom limbs reaching for him. London promises it’s fog and hazy memories.

 

* * *

 

The text messages stop, and so do the phone calls. Eventually it dwindles down to emails, those become few and far between.

 

* * *

 

A ring has been sitting on her finger for two years and it’s finally time to set a date and send out the invites.

 

Dean doesn’t invite him, instead he leaves it up to Sarah. Her slim fingers tap across the keyboard sending out the invite.

 

* * *

 

 

Dean waits a few weeks for a response from Aidan which never comes. He eventually caves and emails him asking if he received the invite.

 

* * *

 

To: Dean O’Gorman

From: Aidan Turner

 

_Sorry about that mate, can't seem to find it. When were the dates again bruv? Just don’t think I can make it out there with filming and all. Cheers!_

 

* * *

 

Dean tries to ignore the tone of the message, how different it is from how Aidan normally is with him. He can’t help but cling onto the black type across the screen. He wonders if Aidan’s bones shook, if his muscles ached, if his heart clenched in his chest when he saw the invitation.

 

He knows it’s wrong to want these things, but he still _wants._

 

* * *

 

January feels half alive and half dead, melancholy rises like the sun.

 

* * *

 

He marries soft skin, a thin frame wrapped in lace. Her petal soft lips press against his and all he can think of is rougher ones.

 

* * *

 

It takes the better part of two months to get Aidan to agree to see him. They haven’t seen each other in over a year, they went all of 2015 without each other and Dean is trying his best to understand all of Aidan’s missed moments but there is no excuse this time. They’re both in Los Angeles at the same time which Dean doesn’t know is some sort of cosmic intervention or just a coincidence.

 

* * *

 

Dean expects it to hurt.

 

He doesn’t expect the hitch in his breath or the irregular beating of his heart, a softer shade of subatomic.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to get a moment alone, just the two of them, but Dean fights for it. It's like clawing his way out of hell blindly.

 

* * *

 

In California the horizon bleeds along the coast. To Dean it's not the same sun as New Zealand, or even the same sky. It’s almost different planets. The green is different, a land filled with sand and palm trees and neon lights, vibrant art painted along brick and cement walls.

 

There’s Aidan, with the sunset behind him, orange and pink gradient against him. He’s sitting on a stone table at Venice Beach, his feet on the bench as he watches people walk by. He has on round frame leopard print sunglasses, the ones that Dean always used to take from him, and his thin light brown cotton shirt that he can’t ever seem to part with and Dean thinks he might be more beautiful than he has ever been.

 

“I always wanted to come here with you.”

 

“You’re the one that told me about this place, about Abbot Kinney.”

 

Aidan laughs, “yeah I did, and you brought her here instead.”

 

“Don’t,”

 

Aidan turns to finally look Dean in the eyes, his blue bright against the Californian setting sun, “no, you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t say. You invited me to your fucking wedding then wanted to act hurt when I didn’t come.”

 

“You said you couldn’t because of filming, that you couldn’t get time off from Poldark.”

 

Aidan pulls his lips back, more of a wicked grin than a smile. “I probably could have if I would have asked. I didn’t want to come. I wasn’t going to,” Aidan squeezes his knees before standing up, “I wasn’t going to hurt myself like that.”

 

“Christ, Aids, I get it, trust me I fucking do. Do you ever think that this hurts me just as much?”

 

“I’m not the one married!” Aidan finally shouts, causing a few people walking by to stop and look at them. Dean looks down, to the camera hanging off of his shoulder. He turns the dial back and forth, aimlessly changing the setting as a distraction.

 

“I have to go, I have dinner plans.” It’s a shitty excuse, but an honest one.

 

“Yeah, go, what does it matter. I was stupid for agreeing to come out here in the first place.” Aidan runs a hand through his hair, growing out now that filming is done. The dark of his hair catches against the light and Dean tries to catch his breath.

 

* * *

 

The edges of the palm fronds curl and sere from the heat, from the California sun, and Dean thinks that maybe he should rot with them.

 

* * *

 

He sits in a chair in Aidan’s hotel room, Aidan has placed himself on the edge of the bed, keeping space between them. Dean feels as if he has been warped back in time, the fading yellow lights the same color of the ones in Aidan’s trailer.

 

The space between them is new to him, carving and unwelcome. He wonders if they’re on a collision course, if two bodies are meant to keep colliding. Maybe it would make them more like magnets.

 

“Stop thinking so much,” Aidan whispers as he keeps his eyes focused on Dean.

 

“How did you know?”

 

“You can never shut your brain off, you only do when you’re working.”

 

Dean gets out of his chair, walking over to Aidan who hasn’t moved from his spot on the bed.

 

The edge of the bed feels like the edge of knife, sharp and teetering.

 

His hands reach out of Aidan’s, his rough hands that Dean always marvels over. He forgets how much Aidan uses his hands, how he is always finding something to fix, something to keep them busy, how they strum against guitar stringers, how they move quickly with a pen pressed between them. He takes each finger one by one, counting the knuckles, the ridges and lines in his hands, neither one of them speaking.

 

They both listen to the erratic pattern of their breathing.

 

Dean starts counting the seconds as he stands between Aidan’s legs, warm thighs pressed against him.

 

Aidan leans up as Dean bends down, his lips hovering.

 

487 seconds since he took Aidan’s hand in his for this lips to press.

 

* * *

 

He throws his arms open wide, as if he’s Atlas stretching his arms and finally breathing again.

  


* * *

 

“Here’s the thing, there’s still so much about the unknown out there. We’ve only seen a fraction of space. The Hubble telescope has only unveiled so much, but I know that I would still trade the sky for you.”

 

Aidan is silent as he looks at Dean, takes in his disheveled hair, his shaking calloused hands. He’s usually so steady, his artist hands ready to hold a paintbrush or a camera. He wants to ask why then did all of this happen, why did he left them drift, why did he let distance matter.

 

Instead he asks, “how quickly would you do it? How long would it take you to trade all of it?”

 

“0.2 seconds.”

**Author's Note:**

> fjas;dkfjawsdf this was my 47th fic, I am so fucking cheesy omggggg


End file.
